Well of course they did...

Trump Tower meeting participant sues for libel

By DAVID SIDERS

Irakly "Ike" Kaveladze, the so-called “eighth man” at a controversial 2016 meeting between top associates of President Donald Trump and a politically connected Russian lawyer, has sued a California linguist for criticizing him on a cable television show this month.

In his complaint, Kaveladze accuses George Lakoff of libel and slander for comments he made in an MSNBC interview with Chuck Todd, in which Lakoff called Kaveladze “the major person who has been responsible for money laundering from Russia and other post-Soviet countries.”

In the complaint filed Tuesday in California’s Orange County, where Kaveladze resides, he claims he is “a law-abiding American citizen, father and businessman” who “seeks by this action to dispel the cloud created by Lakoff’s baseless and scurrilous accusations.”

A lawyer for Lakoff, a professor emeritus of cognitive science and linguists at University of California, Berkeley, appeared to welcome the litigation, saying in an email that “we look forward to demonstrating the accuracy of Dr. Lakoff’s statements.”

“This is the United States of America,” said the attorney, Travis LeBlanc. “We will vigorously defend against this baseless lawsuit attacking Dr. Lakoff’s First Amendment rights.”

Lakoff is best known for penning a Democratic campaign bible,“Don’t Think of an Elephant! Know Your Values and Frame the Debate.”

Kaveladze gained notoriety as a participant in a controversial 2016 meeting at Trump Tower attended by Donald Trump Jr., Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, as well as Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer who said Trump associates pressed her for negative information bout Hillary Clinton during the meeting.

Kaveladze was once the focus of a congressional money-laundering probe, identified in news accounts in 2000 after the General Accounting Office issued a report on Russian money laundering through U.S. financial institutions. Kaveladze was never charged in relation to the inquiry, and he told The New York Times at the time, "What I see here is another Russian witch hunt in the United States.”

In his lawsuit, Kaveladze said Lakoff’s statements have caused “immense personal and professional damages to Kaveladze.” He also asks for punitive damages, claiming Lakoff’s statements were malicious.

Earlier this week, Lakoff and Gil Duran, a former press secretary for California Gov. Jerry Brown and adviser to billionaire Tom Steyer, announced the launch of a new “message framing and communications strategy firm,” FrameLab.